Bridge Foundations

Screw Pile Foundation Solutions for Bridges

Bridge foundations

Installing bridge foundations is inherently an interesting challenge but convenient because loads will be known. River and watercourse banks are usually soft although there may be hard gravels or boulders a few meters below water level. Temporary bridges also benefit from screw piles as they can be easily removed and reused.

Piles can be protected against corrosion using a variety of tested solutions and may have relatively large diameter final extensions to give sufficient lateral and vertical resistance. We produce piles with working loads up to 250kN on a regular basis with much larger capacity available if required.

The additional benefit of using raked screwpiles is that increased support is provided for river banks. They are also particularly useful where the avoidance of cement is an environmental benefit.

Example

An early project was to create foundations for a footbridge in an area renowned for winter floods which had washed earlier bridges out to sea. The soil included small boulders up to 300mm diameter down to 3m deep. Thereafter the soil was very soft until a depth of 12m when strength improved significantly. 89mm piles were driven to maximum torque at depths of 14-15m and despite the bridge being occasionally submerged 3m deep the foundations and bridge remain intact.